Stand to Sea imagines watery worlds through the lens of maritime artwork traditions. The rising sea of mythic proportions comes in the form of seven waves that travel over hundreds of years, past whales and whaling ships, from the edges of faraway oceans to the Atlantic, where they reach land at the Point Street Bridge in Providence, Rhode Island, on September 21, 1938. On that day one of the most devastating New England hurricanes caused the sea level to rise twenty feet up the seven hills that the city was built upon. Bianco based this work on research in the Special Collections of the Providence Public Library, blending a myriad of scrapbook references, aerial photographs, whaling log illustrations, and other sources. Etching on a large copper sheet over the course of months, Bianco illustrates how the space between water and land can change slowly over time, or drastically with the onset of huge storms. Bianco links the physical change of the landscape to her shifting remembrance of place, and the nostalgia she shares with its previous inhabitants.
Detail from Stand to Sea
Allison Bianco, 2023
Intaglio, screenprint, and ink
Courtesy the artist and Cade Tompkins Projects
